Noggins and wishes

I don't like to live for a season I'm not in, but it is really nice to think about working without gloves whenever you want and so on. Winter is sometimes my favorite season out here, but it does make most of this building work more difficult, so this year it's especially exciting to see the sun getting higher in the sky.












This past month we spent a long weekend in the Detroit area visiting friends and family and returned with some inspiration, as well as bacteria and viruses. These things together made for some good quiet introspection.



















Along the trip we listened to a tape of someone reading John Steinbeck's The Pearl, where a young couple's baby is stung by a scorpion and the doctor refuses to see them because they have no money. They go to the ocean and pray for a great pearl which they can sell and have a lot of money and pay a doctor. They find it and it becomes a terrible curse and leads them to a most dreadful fate.

The story, along with the many billboards announcing the Powerball jackpot led to the question, "What would you do if you won the lottery?"

My list was something like this:
Pay off loans, good traveling car, college fund, health insurance, retirement fund, go traveling to inspiring places now and then, and give the rest to the community and so many worthy charities around the world, including setting up an endowment to provide for really fun concerts in town every year.

It's a fun thing to think about. But after listening to the end of the story of the Pearl, I had to rework my list a little. The mistake that was made in the story is that the parents did not pray for the baby's health, but for the money to pay for things to go their way, in other words power and recognition. They got it, and then it got them back really bad.

So... maybe what I really wish for is to not be worried about money or health or education and to be a musician. Whew! I can do that. It asks a lot of me to be true to those wishes, but no more than I already have.











We spent February finishing up some framing tasks, like closets and the blocking you can see in this photo, staggered between the floor joists overhead. These pieces, called noggins by some people, keep the joists from twisting in the middle and tie all the joists together to firm up the floor. It seems like an easy thing to do, but you have to cut each one just right and getting them to fit snug involves a lot of ramrod-type behavior, which is fun for a very limited time. I recommend putting them in before the floor is nailed down if you know where your plumbing and ductwork are going to go.



The plumbing rough-in is also nearly complete. I'm putting separate lines to each fixture rather than mainline with branches. This is partly because a lot of the fixtures are right near where the water comes into the house and partly because it is nice to use these manifolds (pictured) with shutoff valves and have very few joints hidden inside walls. Besides, the hose is cheap relative to the fittings that join pipes together.












So here's to you and the most perfect wishes you can see!